With businesses as large and powerful as Microsoft open sourcing some, if not much of their software, you know there’s a change in the air.
Now, open source has been around for years, but with the rise of the internet, collaborating on projects has become easier. (Learning Linux, still isn’t easy however!)
And at the same time, open source software has become more powerful and feature rich. For example, the free content management system WordPress incredibly now powers 25% of websites. And that figure looks likely to keep on growing.
So the importance of open source software will keep on increasing. And with that in mind, let’s run through some open source software predictions for the coming 12 months:
WordPress Will go From Strength to Strength
WordPress’s domination of the web doesn’t seem to be slowing down, at all. Now, the 25% of websites it runs, many of them of course are very small. However, that’s not the case across the board.
Some very popular media sites run on WordPress. And even some Microsoft blogs are published using WordPress, although with some distinct customizations.
And that’s where much of its strength comes from. WordPress is a strong core, that can have very powerful functionality bolted on to. Consider the thriving theme and plugin marketplaces (both free and paid options). They have made WordPress a lot more useful than it could ever be without all those extensions.
For example, who would have thought when it started out that WordPress could be used to create an e-commerce site? Well, that all changed with the release of WooCommerce.
WordPress Turns into a Fully Fledged Framework
WordPress is in the process of becoming much more than blogging software. It is in fact becoming a fully fledged online publishing framework. That power, and the flexibility that keeps getting added to the platform has helped it stay dominant.
In fact, that is what allowed WooCommerce to grow into one of the most used e-commerce solutions. There’s still plenty of other open source e-commerce options. However they can get very complicated. Choosing Magento may require you hire a Magento Agency. Just to get it working as it should
Security is an Ongoing Concern
In both open source, and closed source software, security is very much an ongoing concern. Hackers are getting smarter by the day, and a hacked website is extremely useful to them.
Some very active open source projects like WordPress keep on top of this. They have regular patches, a thriving community, and automatic updates. Whereas other less active projects can leave vulnerabilities open for months, if not longer.
Witness the Heartbleed Bug in the popular OpenSSL application. The vulnerability was reportedly there for years. And hundreds of thousands of websites were affected by this once it became public.
Drupal and Joomla – Perpetual Runner Ups
These platforms have their supporters, and even the Whitehouse’s website runs on Drupal. But they will always be distant runner ups to WordPress, as they don’t quite have the same thriving communities.
.NET Will Gain Market Share From Java
.NET has always given Java a run for its money. But now, .NET is going open source and even more multi-platform. This is laying the foundation for the framework to grow far beyond what it is now.
Both .NET and Java are firmly entrenched in the enterprise. .NET has of course integrated far better with Windows than Java, and has offered a lot more flexibility regarding user interfaces. However, Java is truly multi-platform and designed to be entirely operating system agnostic.
However, with .NET 5.0, Microsoft will start to pull ahead in the race. The next version of .NET will run on Linux, Mac and Windows. And be supported on devices both large and small. The full integration with Windows will continue of course. But what gave Java its edge will start to shrink.
Until now, for porting .NET applications to Mac or Linux Mono was required. That of course wasn’t officially supported by Microsoft. However, .NET 5 largely does away with the need to use Mono at all. So that open source project may fade away.
All this said, Xamarin is still required at this time. If you’re looking to write in .NET and then publish to iPhone or Android that is. But rumors are circulating that Xamarin is an acquisition target for Microsoft. That would be the last piece of the puzzle to allow developers to write C# code that runs everywhere. Across every device from mobile, to desktop, to cloud.